He Fixed the Match,She Fixed Him by Shikha

I do like reading chick-lit once in a while.Believe me,good works belonging to this genre are genuine fun reads.These days,there is a brand new desi (wannabe) chick-lit hitting the bookstores every other day! Almost all of them have the same old desperate-oversized girl in the wrong side of twenties-looking for a boy formula but not many of them end up selling more than a few hundred copies! So now,when a new chick-lit work reaches me for review,I think twice before accepting it.This new work by debutant author Shikha,came to me for review a couple of weeks back.Anyways,here I am,reviewing this desi (Mills and Boons inspired) romantic tale! I picked up 'He Fixed the Match,She Fixed Him' by first time author Shikha expecting it to be a quick,fun read.Well,the book turned out to be fun in parts,but again,if you are looking for something new in it,you will definitely be disappointed.It's the same old 'brash boy-marries-goody goody girl-only to fall in love with her in the climax- story,served in a new format! So,'HFTM:SFH' tells the tale of Shreya,an ambitious,highly qualified Dilli girl and Kunal, a young entrepeneur.Kunal tricks Shreya into an arranged marriage and how Shreya fights back and make the crooked Kunal fall in line is what this book is all about.As you might have figured it by now,the plot of this book is wafer thin and what makes it work to some extend is the writer's minty cool approach to her debut work.Shikha has made sure that the tale is peppered with entertaining one liners and interesting incidents though one gets the feeling that there were more of them.A little more imaginative plot with interesting twists might have made this book a far better work. Coming to the characters,apart from the protagonists,the book has got a couple of likeable characters in Vineet(Kunal's Cousin) and Jyothsna(his love interest)but it's a pity that the Shikha hasn't bothered to give them more space in the narrative(may be she wanted to focus more on her protagonists!).Anyways,it's a good thing that there aren't too many characters cluttered in the narrative.The book is written in quite plain,conversational English and is not entirely devoid of typos and grammatical errors.The couple of ads (the prominent one being that of a popular matrimony site) which creep up in the narrative also sticks out like a sore thumb.The length of the book is also a big negative(for a wafer thin plot,282 pages is too much)

Verdict-On the whole,'He Fixed the match...' is a passable affair.I'm giving it a 2.6 out of 5.-nikhimenon